Improve Your Smartphone's Photo Quality With This Chip

Researchers at MIT, however, have developed a processor chip that they say can instantly convert mobile device snapshots into professional-looking pictures.

The chip, pictured here, integrates into any mobile device or digital camera, and can be used to improve lighting, apply effects and kill low-light background noise. Plus, researchers say, it uses significantly less power than full computer processors or video cards.

One of the chip's tasks enhances low light photos. "Typically when taking pictures in a low-light situation, if we don’t use flash on the camera we get images that are pretty dark and noisy," Rahul Rithe, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, says in a press release. "And if we do use the flash we get bright images but with harsh lighting, and the ambience created by the natural lighting in the room is lost."

6 Apps for Editing Photos

5. Filterstorm

Filterstorm offers many of the same features you might find in a powerful desktop photo editor on your mobile phone. The app can support up to five layers at a time, and allows you to make adjustments to the image including brush, gradient, color range, vignette or selecting opacity. You can work with the brightness/contrast in a photo, the temperature, exposure, and saturation as well as crop a picture how you would like and specify a specific aspect ratio you’d like the final image to be.

Photoshop Express

Who says you need a computer to use Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop Express is a free, lightweight version of the popular photo editor that allows you to do things like crop and straighten your photos, as well as apply filters, effects and even borders to your prints.

The free app comes with a number of basic features. With a number of other filters, effects, and more available as in-app purchases.

1. Camera+

Camera+ is an app designed for not only editing your photos, but for taking them as well. The app has a built-in stabilizer for steadying your camera while taking pictures, a 6x zoom for getting close to your subject, and as well as a grid to help you line up your shot perfectly.

Once you’ve taken a photo, Camera+ has some built-in editing tools as well as a ton of built-in effects for giving your picture a finishing touch, as well as built-in borders. Finished pictures can be shared instantly on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr from directly within the app.

2. PicsPlay Pro - FX Photo Editor

PicsPlay Pro for Android has over 200 professional presets, allowing you to customize your photo on the fly. The app has several built-in themes such as HDR, Blur, Vintage and Black & White, and has real-time opacity control on those presets, allowing you to customize each one to best fit your own personal needs.

Photos edited using the app can be instantly shared with others on a variety of different services, including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

3. Pixlr-O-Matic

With more than 100 effects, 280 overlays and almost 200 different borders Pixlr-o-Matic lets you customize your pictures quickly and easily to give them a seemingly endless array of different looks. In addition to editing photos already stored on your phone, you can also use the app to take new pictures. Finished photos can be shared with friends via Facebook, or saved to your phone as high-resolution files that you can then print out or use in other projects.

4. PicSay Pro

Ever wish your dog could talk? Anything is possible with PicSay Pro. The Android app has a number of traditional photo editing features such as the ability to remove red eye and crop and straighten photos, and adds to it special effects like the ability to add tech and word balloons to your pictures or make just a small portion of a black-and-white photo color.

What's Hot

More in Tech

What's New

What's Rising

What's Hot

Mashable
is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.